live blogging the FO (men’s) final

5:24 PM 6-4, 6-2, 5-3 Nadal Time for the Robin Soderling to pull out the gladiator armor. He’s neeeeeeeeding it.

5:07 PM 6-4, 6-2, 3-1 Nadal No, we have no idea who the junior champions are, either. And so much for Bode Miller‘s U.S. Open bid. Kind of rough for the USTA‘s number one story line to flame out in the first round. McEnroe is really doing his best to verbally route for Sod to take this to four or five.

4:45 PM 6-4, 5-2 Nadal Rafa has blown this match open pretty well. Can Soderling come back from two sets down? That’s gunna be pretty hard to do. Speaking of pretty, how awesome is this (blurry TV) scene? How about not moving the French Open, y’all? Sounds like a good idea to me. Remember this from last year? That wasn’t quite a good idea… but, oh! That tackle!

4:13 PM 6-4, 0-1 Nadal The new tennis news site, Strawberries and Scream, put up my gossip column from week one of the French. (And while I’m self promoting, I had a post on the NYT‘s Straight Sets blog on everyone’s favorite RG past time: karaoke.) These baseline battles are sick, right? In case you missed it, it was a pretty solid French Open for Sloane Stephens in the juniors’ draws.

3:52 PM 4-3 Nadal A commercial from the Toy Story 3 folk for USPS?! Kind of loving that. But was hoping for the trailer itself. Meanwhile, another ad from Billie Jean and Geico. Brilliant. BJK neeeeeeeeds an award for those faces!

3:31 PM 2-all NBC is throwing it all out there to start: The Wimbledon flashback; Magnus Norman‘s pretty face. With no Mirka to continuously cut to what will they have left come the fourth set?! Oh, wait! Now they’re pulling out the stops: Beyonce, Jay-Z and the Queen of Spain! A little Lady Gaga and Britney into the commercial doesn’t hurt, either.

3:15 PM Ready, play. I was a little surprised the other night when Troy Venechanos told me on the TSF podcast that the Paris fans were such big Federer fans. I was reminded of this when Rafa walked out on the court and Johnny Mac observed that Nadal received a pretty warm applause from folks, which he said was surprising, especially because of a lack of support last year here when Soderling took him down in the fourth round.

3:04 PM, Paris, France I’m pretty surprised that the Lotto web site has no mention of Francesca Schiavone‘s win or Robin Soderling‘s final appearance. When was the last time that Lotto had such a tennis finals weekend?! Am I looking in the wrong place? Please, let me know if so…

6:57 AM, Helena, Mont. These NBC commercials for shows like The Doctors and Monk are almost as frightening as the weekend Today show hosts. Let’s get to the tennis!